This has generally been seen as an offensive move, and the marketing logic is questionable since existing subscribers already like the current content, or they wouldn’t be getting it. This can’t therefore be seen as an effort to attract new customers.

So what is it then? The othering of girls? Well yes, that’s what’s occurred, but I’m not sure that was the intention.

I suspect this move was simply out of fear that they would lose existing (male) customers by polluting their experience with contagious girl stuff.

Lego are not sanitising their “girls’ range” to prevent girls from accidentally playing with something inappropriately masculine (or active or colourful or aggressive or competitive or whatever) – they are sanitising their “boys’ range” to avoid the worry that a macho man’s precious son might turn sissy after exposure to too many purple butterflies or a depiction of a beauty salon.

To me, the biggest problem is that in producing a specifically girl focused edition, all female content is sidelined there. As LEGO have confirmed, regardless of which version your daughter may subscribe to, if she sends in a photo of herself with her own LEGO creation it will appear in, and only in, the girl edition. While I can see some positives in showing lots of girls enjoying LEGO, this means that the standard edition contains zero girls. They are erased from the male experience of LEGO. The intention may well be to avoid any faggy connotations, but the irony is that an all male environment potentially has the opposite effect.

George Robb in British Culture and the First World War, quoted here by Debbie Swann, talks about all male environments (in this case WW1 trenches) enabling, encouraging, creating, male homosexual intimacy, both physical and emotional. This isn’t a new idea (Freud mentioned it as part of his ideas about latent homosexuality) and it’s certainly not an old one, taken to extremes by Mark Simpson and Quiet Riot Girl in her Death At The Mall project (neither of which are safe for kids, sorry).

Lego got savvy and developed some ranges that would appeal to girls. Then they panicked when they realised it might put off boys – or more likely their parents. So they went for the macho fag option of removing any traces of ‘femininity’ from the boys’ magazines.

I don’t know if mine and Mark’s views are ‘extreme’ as I think we actually talk about a situation that exists. What is ‘extreme’ is people’s discomfort with our analysis!

Lovely, considered commentary – thank you so much! I’ve been spreading it all round Facebook and talking about it to other parents. What exactly is it that parents fear will happen to boys who get contaminated with girl stuff, though? You say “the worry that a macho man’s precious son might turn sissy” – is that it, that hetero men and women fear that their sons will become gay? It’s astonishly illogical (and unscientific, though I guess the research proving that you’re born gay is still pretty recent). And odd when a lot of the parents are liberal about gays anyway – or at least seemed that way until now….

What is the fear here? As with any contact with society, there are choices for a parent to either allow or prohibit exposure. If there is overwhelming concern, then stop the subscription to LEGO’s magazine(s), or allow it to continue and use it as a teaching moment. It is their decision to publish what they deem necessary, besides they are almost assuredly motivated by one thing: financial profit (unfortunately).

The previous comment makes me wonder…He or she has resonated with the ridiculous fear of “a macho man’s precious son” turning “sissy.” Isn’t that their right as a parent? To see their son or daughter grow up in a way that they value? And if not, then another scenario should be equally ridiculous…the fear of a strong female mother’s son turning overtly masculine.